Final Target (Dublin Mafia: Triskelion Team Book 1) (Volume 1) Read online

  Final Target

  Dublin Mafia: Triskelion Team, Book 1

  Zara Keane

  Beaverstone Press

  Contents

  About This Book

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Epilogue

  Kiss Shot (Dublin Mafia: Triskelion Team #2)

  Romancing the Alpha 2

  Also by Zara Keane

  About Zara Keane

  Copyright

  About This Book

  FINAL TARGET

  (Dublin Mafia: Triskelion Team, Book 1)

  An explosive new romantic suspense series set in the Dublin criminal underworld.

  His last hit turns out to be his first love…

  As a final job for his mob boss uncle, Lar Delaney agrees to eliminate one last target. Through the crosshairs of his sniper rifle, he realizes that his target is a former girlfriend—a woman who supposedly died five years previously.

  Moira Collins is an intelligence agent whose cover has been shot to smithereens. When she finds herself on the wrong side of an assassin’s rifle, she’s appalled to recognize the only mark she ever let herself fall in love with.

  DUBLIN MAFIA: TRISKELION TEAM

  Final Target

  Kiss Shot (October 2016)

  Bullet Point (Early 2017)

  Be the first to know when there’s a new Ballybeg story. Join my mailing list and get a FREE copy of Love and Blarney!

  http://zarakeane.com/newsletter

  1

  St. Patrick’s Church, Kilpatrick, Dublin

  Of all the sights Lar Delaney expected to see when he wrenched open the door to the confessional booth, a man jacking off wasn’t among them.

  “Jaysus,” he said, taking a step back, momentarily off his guard.

  Spoons Maginty’s weasel face turned chalky white. His beady eyes dropped to his crotch, then widened when he registered the gun pointed at his chest. “Ah now, Delaney,” he said, struggling with the zipper of his stained trousers. “Surely you’re not going to shoot a man for having a wank?”

  Lar swore beneath his breath and flexed his shoulders. The sooner he got out of the enforcing business, the better. No amount of money was worth having to deal with wankers like Spoons. He grabbed his prey by the arm and hauled him out of the confessional. The familiar church smells of incense and dry rot warred with the small man’s body odor. Spoons licked his thin lips and attempted to wriggle out of his captor’s grasp.

  Lar held tight and leaned in close. “You owe Big Mike Reynolds five grand.”

  “I told you I’d pay him next week,” the man whined in a squeaky voice that reminded Lar of his little sister’s hamster.

  “No. You said you’d take care of it by yesterday evening. Big Mike is not impressed.”

  Spoons bounced on the balls of his feet. “What am I supposed to do? I don’t have five grand. Now that the missus has thrown me out and changed the locks, I can’t even rob my own house.”

  “You know the score. You knew it when you asked Big Mike for a loan. Either you pay up or you pay in another way.”

  Spoons wiped his runny nose with the back of his free hand. “I’ve got a job tomorrow night. Me and my mate Batesy are planning to break in to that new jeweler’s on Harcourt Street. You know Batesy, right?”

  Yeah, Lar knew Batesy. He was a brawny man with a short fuse, ready fists, and the smarts of an amoeba. “If you two get nicked, Big Mike will never get his money back.”

  “If I don’t do this job, I’ll never scrape enough dough together to pay him. Besides, the security system is shite. They’re practically begging to be robbed.”

  Lar considered this proposition for a moment, weighing the odds of Spoons getting arrested against the chance of reimbursing Big Mike in full and getting to keep a slice of the loot for himself. He’d opened his mouth to ask for more details when the church door creaked open.

  Both men whirled around. An elderly woman came in, genuflected, and shuffled toward the devotional candles.

  Shite.

  Lar shoved Spoons into the confessional and crammed in after him. The wooden booth was narrower than he remembered from his last visit to a church, and the space barely accommodated his long legs. Spoons squirmed, trying to move away from the loaded weapon pressed against his ribs.

  “If I negotiate with Big Mike on your behalf, I want a twenty percent cut of the takings.”

  “That’s daylight robbery,” Spoons said, oblivious to the irony of his words.

  “Take it or leave it.” Lar squeezed one of Spoons’s bony knees and leaned close to the small man’s ear. “It’s been a while since I kneecapped a man.”

  Sweat beaded on Spoons’s upper lip. “Fine. I’ll give you twenty percent.”

  “Plus whatever you’ve got in your wallet.”

  Spoons’s face fell. “Ah, come on now. A man has to eat.”

  “If you expect him to wait until after the robbery, Big Mike will want a deposit.”

  Muttering, Spoons reached into the pocket of his soiled trousers and extracted a battered wallet. Five crisp hundred-euro notes emerged from its grubby interior.

  Lar whistled. “Robbed an ATM?”

  “Got lucky on the horses.”

  Yeah, right. Pickpocketed some poor unsuspecting eejit is more like it. Lar pocketed the money and the pistol and reached for the door handle. “I’ll be in touch once I’ve had a word with Big Mike.”

  Free from captivity, Spoons shot out of the confessional and made a dash for the exit.

  Ambling down the nave of the church, Lar pulled his phone from the pocket of his leather jacket and scrolled through his contacts until he found Big Mike’s number. He wasn’t fond of the man, but Big Mike was influential in the Dublin underworld and could prove useful to Lar in the future. Plus the extra cash would help fund his new venture.

  “If your mother were alive,” said a raspy voice behind him, “she’d box your ears for entering a church with a loaded weapon.”

  Lar spun around and found himself face-to-face with a priest. His face split into a grin. “Hey, Uncle Malachy.”

  “Don’t ‘Hey’ me, lad.” The grooves on his favorite uncle’s weather-beaten face deepened. “What were you doing with that rat Spoons Maginty?”

  Lar gave a low laugh. “You should be more concerned about what Spoons was doing in one of your confessionals when I found him.”

  “Not masturbating again?” The glint in Malachy’s pale blue eyes blunted his exasperated tone.

  “Yeah. It wasn’t a pretty sight.”

  Malachy glanced across the nave. Apart from the old woman lighting devotional candles, the church was deserted. He dropped his forty-a-day smoker’s voice to a whisper. “I need a word with you, Lar. In pri
vate.”

  The hairs on the nape of Lar’s neck stood to attention. If Malachy needed “a word,” it had to be about Uncle Frank. Any news related to Uncle Frank wouldn’t be good.

  “Unless you’re afraid of being struck by lightning for hanging around a church too long, can we head to the sacristy?” Malachy nodded toward the back of the church, where his office-come-changing room was located.

  “Not going to persuade me to take confession?”

  The corners of the priest’s mouth twitched. “I’m due to say mass in twenty minutes. We’d need at least a day to wade through all your sins.”

  Laughing, Lar followed his uncle to the back of St. Patrick’s Church and into the small room off the altar area. The polished mahogany and faded crimson upholstery of the sacristy was exactly as he recalled from his childhood. A bittersweet smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. The last time he’d been in here, his mother had been alive.

  The creak of the wooden door shutting behind him yanked Lar back to the present.

  Malachy winced when he sat down in his desk chair. “Rheumatism,” he added, correctly interpreting Lar’s raised eyebrow. “Take a seat.”

  Lar took the chair on the other side of his uncle’s cluttered desk. “Why do you need to speak to me in private?” he asked, although he already knew the answer.

  A shadow flickered over Malachy’s lined face. “Francis is looking for you. The cat got out of the proverbial bag while you were in Berlin.”

  Malachy was the only person who called Francis Delaney by his given name. The rest of the family knew him as Frank. And the media, which loved to give notorious criminals a headline-grabbing moniker, referred to him as Mad Dog Delaney. The name fit.

  Lar cracked his knuckles against the arms of his chair. “He knows about my plans, then?”

  “Yeah. He’s not impressed. You’ve unduly influenced Shane, apparently.” Malachy snorted. “As if the lad isn’t well capable of thinking for himself. Frank has always underestimated him. And you, for that matter.”

  Lar swore beneath his breath. He’d known Frank wouldn’t let him and his cousin Shane waltz away from the family “business” to set up shop on their own without a protest, but he’d hoped to keep relations between the sides amicable. Why the hell hadn’t Shane spoken to his father like he’d said he would? “I’ll go by Valentine’s later and talk to him.”

  “That would be wise. Better you go to him than he tracks you down.” Malachy’s lips twisted into a grimace. “If you wanted out, you should have stayed in America.”

  A wave of grief hit him in the solar plexus, eliciting memories of his brother’s cheeky grin and Moira’s sweet smile. Despite his long list of former girlfriends, Moira was the only woman who’d succeeded in capturing his heart. They’d had four blissful months together before her death had left him an emotional wreck.

  “I was supposed to work behind the bar that night,” he said in a thick voice. “Tony asked me to swap shifts with him so he could go on a date the following evening. I should have been there instead of him.”

  “You can’t change the past, Lar,” the priest said gently. “Tony and your girlfriend were in the wrong place at the wrong time. If you’d worked at the club that night, you’d have been killed instead of Tony, but Moira would still have died.”

  Lar stared, unseeing, at the stained glass window behind his uncle’s desk. “I couldn’t stay in America. Not after what happened. Besides, my daughter lives in Ireland, and I want to be a part of her life.”

  “I understand your reasons for coming home, but as far as Francis is concerned, any family member living in Ireland works for him. By moving back to Kilpatrick, you indicated you were good with that arrangement.”

  A burning rage seared through him. “Fuck Frank. I’ve done my time. Literally. I owe him nothing. I grew up in Kilpatrick and I’ve as much a right to live here as he does.”

  “Francis thinks you taking the fall for the botched bank robbery was your duty.”

  “I served five years for a crime I didn’t commit,” Lar growled. “If anyone is owed anything, I am.”

  Five long and lonely years…and his sentence would have been longer had he not made a deal with the state. A deal no one in his family—not even Malachy—could ever know about.

  “Even if Francis treated you badly, you can’t walk away with no consequences. That’s not how this works. If you want out, you’ll have to negotiate terms.”

  Lar clenched his fists, felt his blunt nails press into his palms. He’d never asked to be Uncle Frank’s errand boy, let alone his fall guy, and he sure as hell wasn’t letting the man control his future. “What are you suggesting? That I should stay in his employ for the rest of my life?”

  Malachy leaned closer. The smell of a recently smoked cigarette and expensive cologne wafted over the expanse of the desk. “You have the gift of the gab. Use it to your advantage. Negotiate with Francis. Convince him you’re worth more to him out than in.”

  Lar let loose a string of expletives.

  Malachy chuckled. “That wasn’t what I meant by ‘gift of the gab.’”

  His nephew glared at him. “Fine. I’ll negotiate with Frank. But if that fucker tries to screw me over again, you’ll be giving him the last rites.”

  Malachy appeared unruffled by this threat of violence against his older brother. “Sounds like a plan. Just make sure your new business venture doesn’t have me giving you the last rites.”

  “I can look after myself. Besides, working off-the-books assignments for government agencies is safer than most of the jobs Frank tosses my way.”

  The grooves on his uncle’s forehead deepened. “When I spoke to Shane, he indicated you’d be offering your services to more than just government agencies.”

  “If the price is right and we approve of the job, we’re not too fussy who we work for. I’ve always had a code of honor. I don’t give a crap if it’s not one recognized by a court of law.” Lar pulled the key to his motorbike out of his jacket pocket and got to his feet, narrowly avoiding bashing his head on the low, sloping ceiling of the sacristy. “I need to make tracks.”

  Malachy’s expression turned grave. “You do that. And Lar?”

  “Yeah?” He paused in the doorway of the sacristy and glanced over his shoulder and into his uncle’s pale, troubled eyes.

  “Watch your back.”

  2

  Two Weeks Earlier, London

  The psychiatrist peered at Moira over her half-moon spectacles. “You took a voluntary leave of absence from the agency. Why do you want to go back into the field so soon?”

  Moira schooled her features into an impassive mask and willed her fingers not to clench into fists. The agency had trained her well. “I was exhausted when I asked for a break. I’ve had time to rest and reconsider my position.”

  “You were suffering from burnout,” Dr. Johnson said in the faux understanding tone that made Moira want to slap her. “I can’t sign off on your return to work unless I’m certain you’re up to the strains of the job. And I’m not.”

  “I’m very good at what I do.” Moira kept her voice calm and modulated, careful not to betray her rising impatience. “No one at the agency has ever had reason to question my abilities.”

  “I’m well aware of your abilities, Ms. Collins,” the psychiatrist said dryly, flicking through Moira’s file. “You were a veritable wunderkind.”

  Did she detect a hint of sarcasm in the good doctor’s voice? Dr. Johnson liked feeling superior to her patients, and Moira’s stellar exam results and high IQ put the other woman at a disadvantage. “If my abilities aren’t in question, what’s the issue with allowing me to return to the field?” She gave the doctor a small smile. “I was worn out after my last undercover operation, but I’m feeling much better now. Amazing what a rest can do.”

  “Exhausted” was a gross understatement. Traumatized would be a more accurate description, but accuracy wouldn’t get her assigned to the case she craved mo
re than life itself.

  “You’re very good at disguising your emotions,” the doctor said, “but I’m not as stupid as you seem to believe. You never gave me the full story of what happened during your last undercover operation.”

  Moira’s pulse quickened. “That information is classified.”

  Dr. Johnson’s fingers tensed around the pen she was holding and her eyes narrowed. “Even so, you could be more forthcoming about the emotional impact it’s had on you.”

  Moira folded her hands neatly on her lap and cocked her head to one side. “What would you like to know? I’ve already told you I felt drained when I got back from Syria. I had nightmares and anxiety attacks. I voluntarily took a break.”

  “You quit your job. I don’t blame you. Any horrors I experience from undercover operations are vicarious. I can’t imagine being obliged to live a lie 24/7, to be expected to revert back to my normal personality the moment a job ended, and to be plunged into a new identity a few months later.”

  “I didn’t quit. I asked for some unpaid leave. I’ve never had a problem separating legends from my real self.”

  “Indeed.” The doctor repositioned her spectacles, which had slid down her surgically straightened nose. “Your ability to segue from a legend to your real self is uncanny.”

  “You sound as though you think that’s a bad thing,” Moira said with a tight smile. “My superiors find it rather useful.”

  “Of course they do. It gets you back into the field quicker. And as you’ve said, you’re very good at your job.” Dr. Johnson leaned forward. “Here’s the thing, Ms. Collins. You’re too good at slipping in and out of personalities. It makes me question if you know who you really are.”

  Moira stifled a laugh. Oh, she knew who she really was, all right. And it wasn’t the poised super agent sitting in this overstuffed armchair.

  The doctor tapped a manicured fingernail on a slim blue folder. “Your file makes for interesting reading, even though much of your background information is classified.”